Harrison Ford has a broken ankle, reports suggest, after being injured on the set of the latest Star Wars film yesterday.

The 71-year-old star injured his ankle at Pinewood Studios, in Buckinghamshire, where the latest instalment of the famous franchise - Star Wars: Episode VII - is being filmed.

Disney, which owns Lucasfilm, the company behind Star Wars, confirmed that the Hollywood A-lister was airlifted to hospital in Oxford after the incident, which police said involved a garage door.

A spokesman for Disney added: "Shooting will continue as planned while he recuperates."

It was widely reported today that Ford's ankle has been fractured, with some suggesting the garage door was in fact the door of the Millennium Falcon spaceship from the movie.

The latest Star Wars instalment began production last month, with original cast members of the Star Wars Trilogy Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher joining Ford, who plays Han Solo.

The movie is set for release in December next year, but it is not yet known if filming will suffer a setback as a result of Ford's injury.

Ford, who is married to third wife 49-year-old Ally McBeal star Calista Flockhart, is possibly best-known for his role in the Indiana Jones series in which he played the lead Dr Henry Jones.

After reprising his role as Indiana Jones in 2008, Ford, who has five children, became the highest-paid actor on the Forbes Celebrity 100 the following year.

His big break came in 1977 with the first Star Wars film, directed by George Lucas, with whom he had worked four years previously in American Graffiti.

While there is a story that he was in fact discovered while working on set as a carpenter - a job he did while playing bit-parts in movies before becoming famous - Ford has dismissed the tale.

"(Lucas) hired me for American Graffiti before I ever really was a carpenter," he told a magazine. "It's hard to remember the exact chronology because it was so long ago, but it didn't have anything to do with me working for him as a carpenter.

" When he hired me again for Star Wars, the apocryphal story was that he discovered me anew. But that's unfounded."